Blackboard Blogs

Noted Education Thinker Ken Robinson to Keynote BbWorld

We guarantee you’ll leave BbWorld feeling inspired by the networking and development opportunities that are important to the work you do throughout the year. Of course, that’s to be expected.

But what if we told you to prepare to be inspired by the most interesting person you’ve never heard of: Sir Ken Robinson. An internationally recognized thinker and author on education, creativity and innovation, Robinson will deliver the opening keynote at BbWorld.

Did you enjoy folding paper airplanes more than doing long division back when you were young? Robinson would say that’s untapped creativity, not a recipe for detention. At BbWorld, you’ll get a view into his unconventional ideas about how education can support – not stifle – the creativity and passion in everyone.

What’s Next for Higher Ed: The Lion at the Gate

Posted by Gordon Freedman, Blackboard's Vice President Education Strategy

Although they may not mean to, universities orient societies in certain directions, just as much as schools prepare young citizens. Our education systems, in the words of the late New York University thinker, Neil Postman, don’t prepare students for life per se. They actually create “new publics.” They are the holders of the society in waiting, helping to create the young adults who will take over in time.

This view raises some interesting and disturbing questions. If I were among that public-to-be, as are my children, I would have some hard questions for my elders and their great institutions. Everywhere you look there are messes: finance, manufacturing, the world economy, the environment, addiction to fossil fuel, violence and bloodshed. And the list goes on. Where, I might ask, does the university play in this world?

Administrator's Roundtable: A Discussion About Blackboard Learn, Release 9

Note to Readers: This is the first in a series of posts drawn from a discussion with administrators that participated in the Beta program for Blackboard Learn, Release 9, and who have already launched pilot programs for the new platform at their campuses. In this series of posts, we will hear their impressions, reactions and ideas about Blackboard’s new teaching and learning platform. Roundtable participants include:

Donna Wicks

Systems Administrator for Blackboard, Kettering University, Flint, Michigan

Santo Nucifora

Manager of Systems Development and Innovation, Seneca College, Toronto, Ontario

 

David Robinson

Learning Management System Administrator, Georgia Gwinnett College, Lawrenceville, Georgia

Dr. Lonnie Harvel

Vice President for Enterprise Information Systems, Georgia Gwinnett College, Lawrenceville, Georgia

RELEASE 9: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Blackboard:  Tell us about your first impressions of Blackboard Learn Release 9.

Donna:  I first saw Release 9 at BbWorld last year during (Blackboard CEO) Michael Chasen’s demo along with some members of our faculty who attended. The big thing for me was it just looks fresh; it looks more modern, more up-to-date. I can control more of the look as a system administrator so we can integrate that more tightly with our Web site aesthetic. Immediately after that presentation, my colleagues were so excited, and they couldn't wait to get involved. The faculty, just from what they had seen, thought, “Wow, this is going to be so much easier to build a course!”